Bringer of Hope
by CollateralBeauty
Summary: After losing Clara and saying goodbye to River, the Doctor sets out across the universe again in search of adventure. Soon, his path collides with that of Imogen Brown, a firey teen in her last year of school with a yearning for escape and a curiosity almost equal to the Doctor's. Join them as they travel the stars together and grow a friendship that will last for a lifetime.


AN: Hi everyone! Thank you for taking the time to check out my story! This is my first time publishing any of my work so please be kind- constructive criticism is welcome! The initial inspiration for this story came two years ago and this first chapter was written back in 2015, so some aspects may seem dated, but the rest of the story will be continued from now as I am finally in a position where I am able to continue with this story.

I do not own Doctor Who or it's characters, only my OC Imogen. Nor do I own the lyrics referenced within this story.

Set with the 12th Doctor between Clara and Bill. Thanks again!

Imogen trudged out of the school gates, humming a song under her breath. She clutched the folders that hadn't fit in her over-packed school bag to her chest and walked a steady pace down the path. She was tired, she realised as she stifled a yawn with her hand. Tired and bored. School was so repetitive. She felt closed in and constricted. She wanted to be doing something more.

The song in her head changed as she thought of how tired of the repetitiveness she was. The lyrics to New Romantics by Taylor Swift floated around in her head as she sung them to herself.

 _We're all bored. We're all so tired of everything_. _We wait for trains that just aren't coming._

She looked up as her bus came to a stop beside her, it's doors opening to let her board. She climbed up the stairs and made her way towards the middle of the bus. Sliding into a seat, she placed her folders in her lap and leant her head against the window, staring out at the houses as they passed by.

 _We show off our different scarlet letters; trust me mine is better_.

Imogen was jolted from her daydreaming by a bout of loud laughter; some younger kids from her school were playing a very competitive game of corners. She smirked as the one closest to the edge of the seat struggled not to slip off and onto the floor. She glanced back out the window and, realising that her stop was next, pulled herself to her feet. Using the poles to remain upright, Imogen walked towards the front of the bus. She muttered a quick "thank you" as the doors opened, releasing her into the refreshing afternoon breeze. The bus pulled away from the kerb, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

 _We're so young, but we're on the road to ruin. We play dumb, but we know exactly what we're doing_.

Imogen put one foot in front of the other as she began the five minute walk to her house. As she passed the neighbourhood park, she stopped and bent down to pick a flower. She closed her eyes for a moment and smiled as she breathed in the flower's soft scent.

 _We cry tears of mascara in the bathroom, honey, life is just a classroom_.

 _Too right_ , Imogen thought to herself. She had just began her walk again when a strange noise met her ears. The whirring and sort of grating sound grew louder as a blue box began to fade into view on the path in front of her.

"What on Earth.." Imogen muttered, staring with wide eyes at the object blocking her path. She brushed a hand against the blue wooden doors, jumping when she felt a soft hum under her hand. She looked up towards the top, reading the words aloud; "Police Public Call Box."

She took a step back as the doors flew open and a man with a greying head of hair stuck his head out. For a moment she and the man simply stared at each other, light brown eyes into blue, before the man emerged fully from the box, shutting the doors behind him.

"Where am I?" The man said as the doors clicked shut, his voice thick with an accent.

"Australia," Imogen spoke the first word that appeared in her mind.

The man frowned at her. "Could you be a bit more specific?"

"New South Wales," she offered.

"You're almost there," the man rolled his eyes. "Can you give me an area of New South Wales?"

Imogen frowned at his sarcasm. "Western Sydney."

"That's different."

"What do you mean?" She didn't know how to react to this situation. Was she supposed to run? This man didn't seem at all dangerous, just slightly insane.

The man gestured to the box behind him. "You see this box? It's my time machine. And it usually plops me down in England, or somewhere else miserably cold." He waved a hand towards the sky. "Look, it's even sunny."

Imogen decided to go along with it. "Careful, you might melt."

The man smiled at her. "You're funny, I like you."

She gave the strange man a soft smile back before frowning again at the box. "What do you mean, 'time machine?'"

"I mean exactly what I said," the man spun around in a slow circle, observing his surroundings. "It's my spaceship, and it can take you anywhere in time and space."

Imogen's eyes widened as she looked at the box in a completely new light. "Is it alive? Only, I touched it before and it felt… alive." The man nodded and her eyes widened even further, if that were possible. "Who are you?" She breathed.

"I'm the Doctor," he held out a hand and she shook it. "And you are?"

"Imogen.. Imogen Brown," she took her hand back from him, her books having grown heavy being held in just one arm. "Doctor who?" She asked.

The Doctor grinned, "Just the Doctor." He waited for Imogen to say anything else, but when she remained silent, he continued. "Nice to meet you, Imogen Brown. Now, why am I here?"

"Well, didn't you land here? How can you not know why?"

"Well, my spaceship- she's called the TARDIS by the way, that's Time And Relative Dimension In Space- she has a bit of a mind of her own. She often just lands me in places where she thinks I need to go… There's got to be something going on here, but initial viewing shows nothing out of the ordinary. Unless..." The Doctor turned around in another circle before coming to a sudden stop facing Imogen again. He bent over slightly, placing his face in front of hers and staring into her eyes. "Are you human?"

"Am I human?" Imogen repeated in surprise. "Well, of course I'm human! Why wouldn't I be?" The Doctor shrugged, standing up to his full height again. "Why would you ask that, when I look human? Hang on a second, are _you_ not human?"

"And the penny drops.." The Doctor said with a hint of sarcasm. "No, I'm not. I'm a Time Lord."

"But.. You look human?"

"You look Time Lord."

"Okay," Imogen said quietly, seeming to accept it as fact. "Are there more of these Time Lords, then?"

"There are.. But they're trapped at the end of the universe. Still trying to figure out how to get them out of there, and if I want to." He explained, spinning around for the third time. "So, Imogen, anything odd happen around here lately?"

"Not really, no."

"Great. That helps." The Doctor rolled his eyes in an exasperated manner. "Alright then, look around. Is there anything nearby that seems out of place?"

"Well," Imogen trailed off, staring at something over his shoulder. "There is that ice cream truck. It's been sitting there for weeks now; sometimes it opens and sells ice cream, but mostly it just sits there."

The Doctor turned around to look at the offending truck. It was a darkish pink colour, with white around the top and the ice cream menu on its side, just like your average ice cream truck. But something wasn't quite right.

"Come on, then," the Doctor began to approach the truck, before remembering something. He turned back to Imogen. "You can't help me investigate with all those books in your hands." He took her books and her bag and pushed open the door of his ship with his foot, chucking her stuff inside. "There we go."

"Hey!" Imogen exclaimed. "I've got an unfinished assignment in that bag!"

"It's fine, it'll be there later. Besides, time machine!" The Doctor waved his hands at the TARDIS. "Now, come on." He took her hand and led her across the road to the ice cream truck, coming to a stop outside the back doors of the vehicle. "It's very low to the ground," he observed. He was right, the bottom of the truck seemed to be mere centimetres from touching the tarmac. He pulled a long metal object from his pocket and pointed it at the doors. "Shall we take a peak, then?"

"What's that?" Imogen asked, gesturing to the object he held in his free hand.

"Sonic screwdriver," he explained, turning it on. The object made a whirring noise and lit up at one end. "It's very good at a variety of things, especially opening locked doors."

There was a click as the doors unlocked and the Doctor pulled them open with a flourish, revealing..

"Nothing," the Doctor said, stating the obvious. Or was he?

"Not completely nothing," Imogen pointed to a square in the floor with a handle on it. "Is that a hatch?"

The Doctor turned to her and grinned, "It is indeed." He reached out and tugged on the handle, opening it easily, "Apparently they thought the door would hold." They peered down the hole in surprise; a ladder led down into the depths of the road and they could see the soft glow of light.

"I guess that explains why the truck was so low," Imogen said, eyes wide. The Doctor began to climb down the ladder. "What are you doing?"

"Investigating," the Doctor replied, pausing his descent. "Are you coming?"

"Well, I can't do anything else seeing as _someone_ locked my stuff inside their time machine!" She leant over the hole and watched as the Doctor hopped off the ladder at the bottom. He rolled his eyes at her as she finished complaining and climbed down after him.

Imogen looked around in awe at the massive space they had found themselves in. A machine sat in the centre of the room, bubbling away at boiling some sort of liquid; barrels sat dotted around the place, filled with the finished product and a pair of tunnels led out of the room in opposite directions.

"What is this place?" Imogen whispered.

"A hideout would be my best bet," the Doctor replied. He pulled his sonic screwdriver back out of his pocket and turned it on, scanning first the machine and its contents, and then the tunnels. "The readings for the oil in these barrels look familiar, but I can't quite pinpoint why. Ah, well, I guess we'll just have to go ask whoever's in these tunnels."

"Do you know which way to go, then?" She asked as the Doctor lead her towards the tunnel on the left.

He waved the sonic in her face, "the sonic's picking up lifeforms down this tunnel, so, yeah, I know where to go."

The Doctor and Imogen walked quietly through the tunnel towards the light flickering at the end of it. As they neared the end, the Doctor stopped so suddenly that Imogen almost ran into the back of him. Almost.

"Watch it-!" Imogen began but the Doctor held a hand over her mouth. He used his other hand to hold a finger to his lips as he took his hand back. She fell silent.

"Now," the Doctor whispered hurriedly. "My bet is that there is an alien, or aliens, in that room and they aren't going to be very impressed at our arrival. So, do as I say and try not to do anything stupid." Imogen rolled her eyes, but nodded and the Doctor exclaimed sarcastically, "how do you do that so much with your eyes? How do they not just roll out of your head? It's ridiculous!"

"You obviously haven't seen yourself, then," she replied with equal sarcasm.

"Shush," the Doctor held a finger to his lips again. He used a hand to gesture to the tunnel opening behind his shoulder and raised a questioning eyebrow. "Ready?"

Imogen nodded and they continued, making their way into a spacious cavern. A number of workstations were placed evenly around the room, empty bar one. A man stood working at the station against the left wall, and he looked up as they entered, an eerie grin making its may across his face. Imogen frowned; he wasn't alien at all. She turned to the Doctor to enquire as to why he had told her there were aliens in the room, but found that the Doctor was standing very still, an expression of slight curiosity masked by anger on his face.

"You're supposed to be dead," the Doctor said finally.

The man smirked, "as are you, Doctor."

Imogen glanced between the two men, confused. "Doctor, what's going on?"

But the Doctor offered no response, and for the very first time since meeting him, just 15 minutes before, and after all the things he told her, Imogen felt afraid, especially as the other man turned his gaze to her.

"Your companions do just keep getting younger, Doctor, don't they?" He spoke words designed to twist the Doctor into guilt. "She's even wearing a school uniform. Goes to the local school, I think." The Doctor glanced at her briefly, as though only just noticing that she was, in fact, wearing a uniform, before the man continued. "How old is this one, then?"

The Doctor was silent for a moment, his expression calculating. "I don't know. We only just met."

"Well, why don't we ask her now?" the man's lips twisted into a sly grin, and he flicked a switch at his desk. "How old are you, dear?"

Imogen held back a shiver at the way he said the word 'dear.' She didn't want to give the man a response, but something pulled at the corner of her mind, forcing her mouth open and the words to fall from her lips. "I'm 18 in a couple of months."

"17 then," somehow the man's smirk grew. "My, my, Doctor. Still a child-"

"-I am not a child!" Imogen interrupted him, a hint of anger in her words. She hated people saying that.

"And feisty, too," the man continued. "Rose was feisty, from what I remember… Well, aren't you going to introduce us, Doctor?"

The Doctor took a small step forwards and slightly to the right just in front of Imogen -a protective stance- before speaking; "Imogen, meet Brother Lassan, leader of the Krillitane."

Imogen bit her lip, glancing warily at the newly identified Brother Lassan. "I thought you said there were aliens here."

"I still think there are, but not him. He was, once, but he evolved well beyond that. He became human," the Doctor explained. "How did you survive, Lassan?"

Lassan smirked. "Doctor, you should have known the Krillitane oil would have no effect on me; you said it yourself, I've evolved. I've evolved well beyond the faults of my species. Though injured from the blast, I fled here, to my cousins, bringing with me the knowledge needed to rebuild the technology you destroyed."

The Doctor smirked and said lowly, "what, being defeated once wasn't enough for you?"

"Doctor, the only one being defeated here, is you," Lassan laughed, a wicked grin on his face. A scratching noise began to be heard from the tunnels behind him. "Come, won't you stay for tea? My family is waking up."

The Doctor offered him no response, instead he turned and pushed Imogen back the way they came. "Run!"

She didn't need to be told twice. Imogen raced through the tunnel, the Doctor hot on her heels. She was halfway up the ladder back into the ice cream van when she realised he'd stopped. She turned her head to look at him and found him scanning the barrels again with his sonic. "Doctor!"

"Yes, I'm coming. Just scanning for one more thing- aha!" Satisfied, he swiftly pocketed the sonic and hurried over to the ladder, following Imogen up and out of the tunnels and into the ice cream van.

The two of them burst out of the van and onto the street, the Doctor moving to guide her to the TARDIS before grinding to a sudden halt. Two Krillitane had beat them to their destination and were climbing all over the blue box, trying to break in. Luckily for Imogen and the Doctor, they were yet to notice them.

"Oh my…" Imogen murmured under her breath, eyes wide with shock. "Those are proper aliens."

"Yep," the Doctor replied in an equally as hushed tone. "Two proper aliens who most likely want to kill us. You wouldn't happen to have somewhere else we could go, would you?"

"My house is just down the road," Imogen said, not daring to tear her eyes away from the creatures before them. "In the opposite direction of the aliens."

"Sounds good to me," the Doctor grabbed her hand as the ice cream van began to shake. "Run."

The pair took off down the road, feet pounding the asphalt as they disappeared around a corner just in the nick of time.

AN: Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think and if you'd be interested in reading more!


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